Niche at Gamescom 2016

We saw Niche at Gamescom 2015, so returning this year, Team Niche, took the time to tell us about what has changed over the course of the year.

Niche is a fresh blend of turn-based strategy and simulation combined with roguelike elements. Shape your own animal tribe and find an ecological niche for it to live in. Keep your tribe alive against dangers, such as hungry predators, climate change and spreading sickness. Resource management and smart breeding based on real genetics are key in Niche. All worlds and animals are procedurally generated.

Philomena Schwab was there at the business booth for the Swiss indies and told us all about the game’s latest developments. Unlike last year though, Niche was also present at the Indie Arena Booth which was a very big deal for the studio, because it is the very time that they showed their game to the general public in such a huge expo.

“A lot has changed,” said Philomena and started telling us about all the new stuff, such as the new procedurally generated islands, the tons of extra content as well as the fact that they got funded by Kickstarter (a link to which can be found here)

The team is planning to release the game in Early Access on Steam in September and then start working on all of the extra Kickstarter stuff that they have promised to bring. The full release is expected somewhere in the 1st quarter of 2017 and it will come on PC, Mac and Linux.

Talking about development difficulties, Philomena told us that trying to combine the sandbox and the story aspects of the game was definitely the hardest thing, since they “want to bring them together” and make something similar to Don’t Starve. They are still working on if things should be simulated or if the world should be centered around the player’s actions, about how the events should occur.

Philomena also told us last year, that she was in between studying biology or game design and that she is happy she picked game design, since she ended up making a biology game for her thesis in the end of her studies. Team Niche is at the moment comprised of four people along with a few freelancers that do extra work for the game.